Just Perfect (10 page)

“Very.” The sleepy roughness of his voice sent a shiver of need through her. “Now, aren’t you glad you came?”

“Actually, I am.”

“Good.” He rocked back on a turn, bringing one of his thighs between hers. It pressed briefly against the seam of her jeans and the sensual contactset off sparks of pleasure, making her want to rub wantonly all over him.

Okay, this was getting way out of hand. She absolutely had to ease away.

In just one more second.

His cheek rubbed against her hair as he whispered in her ear. “Come with me.”

“Hmm?” With her mind hazed with arousal, her first thought was come as in orgasm. He wanted her to come with him? Right here? That made her lean back enough to see his face, even though her hips remained pressed to his, with the now not-so-subtle bulge prodding her belly. “
W-what
?”

“On Sunday.” He frowned at her shocked expression. “The snowboard competition. Come with me.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “I thought—Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. And no. I can’t. I told you, my family will be here.”

“Meet me there anyway, in front of the VIP stands. I’ll leave passes for all of you at the gate.”

“Alec, really, I… I can’t.”

“Why not? Wait a second.” His eyes shifted, then widened. “You’re not married, are you?”

“No. I’m not married.”

“Involved?”

“No.”

“Dying from a rare disease?”

“No.”

“Embarrassed to tell me you’re bi, you were once a man, you have an STD?”

“No!” She laughed.

“Then meet me Sunday.”

“No.” Her humor turned to exasperation.

“Why not? I’m serious. There has to be a reason.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I thought you said the word ‘no’ worked.”

“I lied. Well, no actually, I forgot to clarify that you have to mean it when you say it, and you don’t.”

“Yes, I do!”

“Christine—” He looked incredulous. “I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. I know you’re attracted to me. So give me one good reason why you won’t go out with me.”

“Maybe I’m not attracted in that way.”

“Right.” He glanced about, then made three quick turns that took them off the dance floor. Darkness engulfed them. A quick look about told her they were at the base of the steps leading to the stage. A curtain shielded them from the people in the pub. In the next instant, she found her back pressed to a wall. Alec’s mouth started toward hers.

“Wait!” Panic had both her hands flat against his chest and her voice coming out as a squeak. “What are you doing?”

“Kissing you. Or rather, I’m about to.”

She opened her mouth to say no, but somehow the word got stuck. She stared up at him in the shadow, the noise of the bar muffled. Dim light glinted in his eyes as he stared back at her, his gaze intent. She dropped her gaze to his mouth. How many times had she wanted to feel those beautifully masculine lips moving on hers?

She looked back at his eyes. “One kiss.”

His head started down again.

“Wait!”

He lifted his head, his expression saying:
What now
?

“No hands,” she said, and whipped her hands off his chest to tuck them between her back and the wall.

The incredulous exasperation that flashed into his eyes would have been funny if her heart wasn’t fluttering up into her throat.

Very slowly, very deliberately, he moved his hands from her hips to plant them one at a time against the wall to either side of her head.

And then his mouth covered hers.

Oh my God
was her last coherent thought as she slipped into the liquid wonder of his kiss. His lips molded and moved, leading her as he had on the dance floor. His head slanted for a better angle as his tongue slipped inside, coaxed, teased, and tangled her up with need.

A whimper escaped her as she followed, returning every lick and taste, hungry for more, and more, and more. If she had only this one kiss, she wanted it to last forever. He seemed bent on the same goal, pouring everything he had into the play of mouths, until her body started melting down the wall.

When the kiss ended, she let out a long, heartfelt sigh. Then opened her eyes. Slowly.

She found him smiling down at her with a look of utter male satisfaction.

Apparently, she’d slumped several inches down the wall.

“Ah, well.” She cleared her throat and willed strength into her wobbly knees. Somehow she managed to straighten. “Yes. That was…” She cleared her throat again.

“Eloquently put.” He stepped back and offered her his hand.

She took it. Gratefully.

When he started walking, she followed numbly, vaguely aware that the pub wasn’t as crowded as it had been earlier. The band appeared to be quitting for the night. Rather than go to the table, he walked her to the front door, retrieved her coat, and helped her put it on.

Stepping out into the cold, he pulled the hood into place, then cupped her face and gave her another kiss, this one sweet and all too brief.

She frowned in disappointment when he lifted his head.

“I’ll see you Sunday.”

And then he stepped back inside.

She stood in confusion, staring at the closed door of the pub. When her senses snapped back into place, she wanted to stamp her foot. “No,” she said. “No, no, no. I mean it.”

Your gene pool might be where you’re born, but you don’t have to live there.

—How to
Have a Perfect Life

Christine welcomed the noisy chaos of four adults and two children arriving and unpacking as her family descended on the condo. It kept her from thinking about Alec and that devastating kiss at the pub.

Almost.

Actually, she had trouble thinking about anything except that kiss, but her family provided at least some distraction.

“I can’t believe it’s been so long since I spent Christmas with you guys,” she said at breakfast Sunday morning.

“Well, there was the little matter of your residency,” her mother pointed out with a gracious smile as she sprinkled artificial sweetener on her bran cereal.

Sitting at the round, glass-top dining table, Christine marveled at her mother’s beauty. How did a woman just shy of sixty manage to look so lovely, young, and perfectly put together all the time? People told her she’d inherited her mother’s looks and her father’s brains, but frankly she didn’t see it on either count. Next to Barbara Ashton she was a gangly giraffe.

As for the brains, she came in last in the family there as well. She watched her brother as he read the Denver paper. Like their father, Robbie wasn’t so much handsome as impressive, with sharp, angular features, but both men were off-the-charts intelligent.

“I was so glad when Robbie told me you were joining us this year,” Natalie, Robbie’s wife, said as she managed to feed their baby in the high chair, their two-year-old, and herself at the same time. As a refreshing contrast to so much tall blondness, Natalie had a petite build, dark hair, and big brown eyes. “There’s nothing more important than being with family during the holidays, especially for children.”

Baby Jonathan let out a screech and clapped his chubby, messy hands.

“Agreed.” Christine nodded, and congratulated herself on going a whole five minutes without thinking about Alec.

“Hey, check this out.” Robbie folded the newspaper inside out. “There’s a snowboard competition going on today. Anyone interested in going?”

Christine froze.

“To watch snowboarding?” Robert Senior raised a disapproving brow. He sat with his legs crossed in a manner that Christine had always considered the epitome of masculine elegance. Lifting a sharp knife, he cut his grapefruit into precise sections, as he had every morning for as long as she could remember. A half a grapefruit and a bowl of bran cereal was what the Ashtons eat. Every. Single. Morning. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the attraction to snowboard-ing. In my day, people skied. They didn’t skateboard down the mountain like a bunch of wild hoodlums.”

Praying her father would override Robbie’s suggestion, she poked at her own cereal and longed for a Danish.

“They still ski.” Robbie laid the paper next to his bowl. “And snowboarding isn’t just for teenage boys anymore. In fact, I’ve been thinking about learning.”

“You have?” their father asked—and just like that, suddenly snowboarding was acceptable. Figures. Christine made a face at two-year-old Charles that made him giggle. “Where is this competition?”

“On Jibber’s Run,” Robbie answered. “It starts at ten. Maybe afterward, we could look into renting boards for tomorrow and giving it a try.”

Oh, no
. Christine put down her spoon. First, she did
not
want to go anywhere near Jibber’s Run where Alec would be waiting for her to join him. And second, she had
not
spent a week honing her skiing skills just to have her brother take up snowboarding. If the pattern of their lives held true, he’d be great at it from day one, and she’d be scrambling to keep up.

“Excuse me.” She raised a hand. “I thought we were going to ski tomorrow.”

Robbie shrugged. “We’ll be here two weeks. There’s plenty of time to do both. Natalie?” He turned to his wife. “Any interest in seeing a snowboard competition?”

Natalie looked up from the baby food she was coaxing Jonathan to eat. “Oh, I’d love to, but what about the boys? I haven’t had time to contact the babysitting service.”

“Mom’ll watch the boys. Won’t you, Mom?”

Barbara Ashton stiffened slightly. “Actually… I’ve arranged for the decorator to come by and put up our holiday decorations.”

“Great.” Robbie beamed at her, ignoring the subtle no. “Since you’ll be here all day, it won’t be any trouble for you to watch the boys. Hey, they can help you hang ornaments on the tree.” He tickled his older son’s tummy. “How’s that sound, Chuckie? You want to help Grammy decorate?”

The boy screeched with glee.

Christine glanced over just in time to see the horror that flashed through her mother’s eyes at that suggestion. Allow a rambunctious toddler near her professionally decorated, twelve-foot-tall artificial tree?

Christine had yet to see this monstrosity, but Natalie had regaled her with enough stories to have her cringing at the thought. She looked at her sister-in-law, expecting her to beg for a real tree—which she knew Natalie desperately wanted for her boys. Instead, Natalie just kept coaxing the baby to eat, not saying a word.

She looked at her brother next. He looked right back at her, his expression amused and challenging. Dammit. Neither one of them planned to bring it up.

Steeling herself for battle, she bravely took up the standard. “Speaking of trees… since this is my first Christmas with the family in so long, I was hoping for a real tree.”

“Don’t be silly.” Her mother waved the thought aside. “Real trees are much too messy.”

“They’re worth it, though,” Christine countered. “Especially for children.”

Her mother sent her a chilly look. “They never look as nice and we already have a tree.”

“Yes, but—”

“Must you always argue?” Her mother gave the sigh of disappointment that never failed to make Christine feel twelve again.